The news: Content maintenance is no longer optional if brands want to stay visible in generative engines and chatbot answers.

• Over 70% of pages cited by ChatGPT were updated within the past 12 months, per AirOps’ The Silent Pipeline Killer report, making content renewal and refreshing a must for relevance in AI outputs.
• More than 60% of commercial pages cited by ChatGPT were updated in the past six months, and just 1 in 5 commercial citations went to content older than a year.

The stakes: The days of publishing once and moving on are over, as frequent updates to content are crucial for generative engine optimization (GEO).

• Content that hasn’t been updated in more than a year is 50% less likely to be cited by ChatGPT.
• While content in industries like education and research can remain “fresh” for a year or more, per AirOps, ecommerce’s window to remain competitive in AI citations is just 3 to 6 months.

The challenge: Constantly updating pages could be a time-consuming and frustrating task for smaller companies without large social budgets. Some ways to address content freshness include:

• Automate revisions. Set up AI workflows that automatically update online content periodically.
• Rate content relevance. Prioritize high-impact pages like top-performing content or commercially critical pages—such as product listings or FAQs—that are more likely to be surfaced in AI-generated results or drive conversions.
• Add it to the schedule. Break content into small chunks and refresh individually over time, eliminating the need to overhaul entire pages at once.

Final takeaway: Brands that treat content as an ongoing performance lever, not just a one-time project, will earn sustained visibility and trust in generative AI (genAI) results. For CMOs, that means rethinking content strategy as a living ecosystem, where freshness is the new SEO.